Central Asia

I had been planning to visit Central Asia with much enthusiasm for quite a while and I managed a first incursion into Kyrgyzstan for an academic conference in Bishkek during the early part of the summer of 2017. That visit only whetted my appetite to see more (especially since I hadn't been able to visit the neighboring countries of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan).



Hence, upon my return, I began planning for my trip to Western China as an ambitious follow-up. My trip took me to Ürümqi, Kashgar, Turpan, Dunhuang and partially down the Chinese side of the famed Karakoram Highway. It was everything I had hoped it would be.

My interest was twofold. First of all, I had been following closely the details surrounding the unfolding of the One Belt-One Road Initiative as part of my academic research agenda. I particularly wanted to see the China-Pakistan Friendship Highway, but I eventually became intrigued with the history of the region. I bought Peter Frankopan's "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World", and devoured as much of the book as I could during the 14 hour flight from the United States' East Coast to Beijing. I couldn't put the book down, even after landing in China:

"Urban centers spurred each other on, with rivalry between rulers and elites prompting ever more ambitious architecture and spectacular monuments. Libraries, places of worship, churches and observatories of immense scale and cultural influence dotted the region, connecting Constantinople to Damascus, Isfahan, Samarkand, Kabul and Kashgar. Cities such as these became homes to brilliant scholars who advanced the frontiers of their subjects. The names of only a small handful are familiar today--men like Ibn Sīnā, ... Al-Bīrūnī, and al-Khwarizmi--giants in the fields of astronomy and medicine; but there were many more besides. For centuries before the modern era, the intellectual centres of excellence of the world, the Oxfords and Cambridges, the Harvards and Yales, were not located in Europe or the west, but in Baghdad and Balkh, Bukhara and Samarkand." --- Peter Frankopan, "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World", Vintage Books, March 2017.

Ürümqi


Kashgar


Karakoram Highway


Turpan


I must say, I'll be back in the near future.

Media On Trial in Leeds ...and other Sunday musings.

Held recently was an event that should be much more commonplace throughout the western world than is currently, especially after the Iraq debacle. I couldn't help thinking that as it runs out of opportunities for investment, capitalism is accentuating its destructive imperialist phase where it seeks to destroy countries through war just so it can invest (among other things) in the "reconstruction" (yes, I'm admittedly a neophyte in my analysis, lacking in any ideological rigor). Anyway, participating in the "event", known as Media On Trial, were Sheila Coombes, Professor Piers Robinson, independent researcher Robert Stuart, journalist Patrick Henningsen, former UK ambassador to Bahrain and Syria Peter Ford, and investigative journalist and photographer Vanessa Beeley. The talks are also available as a 21st Century Sunday Wire podcast. Well worth taking a couple of hours (grab yourself a cup of coffee or tea) and listening.

Also interesting is a lecture by Dr. Prabhat Patnaik, entitled The State under neo-liberalism. To the question he poses of - "How do you preserve the social legitimacy of the state in the face of its submission to the powers of finance capital?", he respondes - "by locating a common enemy or a fifth column", this in the interests of diverting the public's attention. The war on terror is just one of those diversions. Interesting thoughts by an Indian Marxist economist and political commentator who taught at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, from 1974 until his retirement in 2010. He was also the vice-chairman of the Planning Board of the Indian state of Kerala from June 2006 to May 2011.

Hurricane season precautionary reading...

As the 2018 hurricane season rapidly approaches, I delve into the past. In particular, I'm motivated to recall the introduction to my late father's doctoral dissertation (it is worth noting that his description differs somewhat from historical reports):

On the eleventh of September, 1928, the radio operator of the freighter "Commack" wired a message describing a well-formed tropical disturbance which had been located at longitude 50 ° W., and latitude 15° N. This was the first notice concerning a large and powerful hurricane which was moving across the middle Atlantic from the direction of the Cape Verde Islands. On the following day this hurricane broke with savage fury across the feeble land barrier of islands separating the Caribbean from the Atlantic. The center of the hurricane passed slowly over the northern part of the French island of Guadeloupe during the morning of the twelfth. It was moving in a west-northwesterly direction at a speed of about ten miles an hour. Not only Guadeloupe but also St. Kitts and Montserrate informed the outside world of the great damage of property and high loss of life occasioned by the creature of nature.

Another freighter, "Matura," out of Trinidad, found itself in the path of the winds and registered a low barometer reading of 27.50 at sea level. The position of the ship when taking this reading was about ten miles to the south of St. Croix, one of the largest of the Virgin Islands. The storm kept to its west-northwest course and penetrated into the island of Puerto Rico at the southeast corner near the town of Guayama early in the morning of the thriteenth of September. Moving at a speed of about 13 miles per hour, the storm, known as San Felipe by the Puerto Ricans, ripped the island diagonally from its southeast corner to the northwest area between Isabela and Aguadilla.

From Puerto Rico the storm moved on to the north of Santo Domingo and into the Bahamas, passing south of Nassau and Turk Islands. Finally on the morning of the sixteenth it entered Florida near West Palm Beach. Here it changed direction and moved northward. Spending its force as it advanced up the Atlantic coast, it disappeared finally around Lake Ontario. However, in Florida, particularly in the Lake Okeechobee area, it did a great deal of damage. The losses were calculated in the thousands of dollars and the Red Cross estimated that nearly two thousand people lost their lives in the storm.

This hurricane has been regarded as one of the strongest to sweep across the West Indies. Its intensity did not diminish from the time it broke into the Caribbean until the seventeenth, five days later, when it was moving up the Atlantic coast. All authorities on the tropical storms which have hit Puerto Rico agree that San Felipe was the most powerful in modern times. The strength of its winds as it passed through Puerto Rico is doubtful, because the cups of the anemometer were carried off with the fury of the high winds which lashed the island. The estimate of the velocity of these winds varied from 160 to 190 miles an hour over the period of three to four hours during which the storm was at its peak. San Felipe was accompanied by heavy rains. In the mountainous area of Adjuntas, where heavy rain can normally be expected, the questionable reading of 29.6 inches for a 48 hour period was recorded.

The loss of life and property in Puerto Rico was high. Over 300 persons lost their lives. Without the radio warnings, many more would have perished. Property damage was difficult to estimate. Calculations varied from $50 million to $85 million. The impoverished little island, ... was little prepared to meet such a catastrophe.

...from Mathews, Thomas G., Puerto Rican Politics and the New Deal, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1960: pp. 1-2.

A Tale Of Two Islands, by Vijay Prashad

Yes, we've been through hell and back:

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was a hyperactive, deadly, and extremely destructive season, featuring 17 named storms, ranking alongside 1936 as the fifth-most active season since records began in 1851. The season also featured both the highest total accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) and the highest number of major hurricanes since 2005. All ten of the season's hurricanes occurred in a row, the greatest number of consecutive hurricanes in the satellite era, and tied for the greatest number of consecutive hurricanes ever observed in the Atlantic basin since records began in 1851.

But the point of this post is to contrast the approaches of two islands to the threats, and it's done effectively by Vijay Prashad. I'll let him "speak":

one island, a poor socialist state with infrastructure in grave need of modernisation, has slowly emerged out of the chaos caused by a hurricane’s wrath, while the other, a territory of the richest country in the world, cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel.

You should read the entire article for yourself. Here is just a piece:

While Cuban journalists and brigades fanned Cuba to provide information to the authorities about destruction and reconstruction, Puerto Rico went dark. Communications collapsed and information about the damage was not easily available. While in Cuba the authorities tried to get exact information of the damage done to each home, in Puerto Rico the numbers thrown about were the price tag for recovery—between $40 billion and $85 billion is the estimated insurance claims that will likely be triggered by the devastation. It says a great deal about the different approaches to disaster: one makes sure each person is tended to and the other worries about the cost of the recovery.

READ IT!

*****

Oh, and a footnote related to Puerto Rico's fiscal crisis.

The extraordinary Ethiopian philosopher Zär’a Yaqob

Not only because of the advanced thoughts of Zar'a Yaqob, which must be attributed to his personal insight and no direct influence of a school or stream, his treatise is important for historical research. Especially in Hegel's philosophy of history, which ascribes no philosophical ambitions to Sub-Saharan Africa, Zar'a Yaqob offers a perfect counterexample, since he lived about 200 years before Hegel. Other racial theories find in him a counterexample. Wikipedia: Die freien Enzyklopädie

Casa del Libro:

Zar'a Yaqob means "Scion of Jacob" and is the name of a man who must be regarded as a significant thinker of the 17th century. He lived from 1600 to about 1693/94 u.Z. in the Ethiopian highlands. In this time of fierce religious conflict between the Catholic and Coptic churches, Zara Yaqob posed the question of truth and found in the human mind the only relevant instance of knowledge. At the request of his pupil Waldä Heywat ("son of life") he wrote his insights as a Hätäta ("essay") in the form of an autobiography. Waldä Heywat continued the book of his teacher with his own Hätäta. Zar'a Yaqob could not fall back on a rich tradition of science and philosophy in formulating his thoughts as did his contemporaries in Europe. Precisely for this reason, it is important to mention that the study of his essay by Claude Sumner results in a comparison of Zär'a Yaqob with Rene Descartes, which also shows that modern philosophy began in Africa at the same time as in Europe

Read more about this extraordinary African HERE, of which I will only highlight the following quote:

In chapter five, Yacob applies rational investigation to the different religious laws. He criticises Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Indian religions equally. For example, Yacob points out that the Creator in His wisdom has made blood flow monthly from the womb of women, in order for them to bear children. Thus, he concludes that the law of Moses, which states that menstruating women are impure, is against nature and the Creator, since it ‘impedes marriage and the entire life of a woman, and it spoils the law of mutual help, prevents the bringing up of children and destroys love’. In this way, Yacob includes the perspectives of solidarity, women and affection in his philosophical argument. And he lived up to these ideals. After Yacob left the cave, he proposed to a poor maiden named Hirut, who served a rich family. Yacob argued with her master, who did not think a servant woman was equal to an educated man, but Yacob prevailed. When Hirut gladly accepted his proposal, Yacob pointed out that she should no longer be a servant, but rather his peer, because ‘husband and wife are equal in marriage’.

What Exactly is 'Openness'?

A friend of mine posted a riposte of Angela Merkel to Trump which went like this: “It is not isolation and the building of walls that make us successful, but open societies.” I think we need to step back for a minute and ask what exactly is this "openness"? Surely open-mindedness is something that is emulated in liberal societies and we all probably agree that to have an open mind is desirable. Close-minded individuals, on the other hand, are to be avoided along with the attribute. That said, I think something is hidden here. "Openness" is sometimes uttered by politicians in the same breath as "free trade" (open trade or globalization), but they aren't the same thing. If they were synonymous, why does free trade or "globalization" also produce losers? Open-mindedness seems to us unequivocally positive while globalization obviously isn't (or at least not under certain circumstances). Someone, as we say in Spanish, might be trying to sell us "gato por liebre". As economists, we teach the so-called "virtues" of free trade (globalization), but with a very important caveat that is so easily forgotten. In my graduate international economics class, I teach the virtues of free trade, quantifying out of a very simple model what are called the "gains to trade". The principle "virtue", I tell my students, is precisely the enlargement of the "economic pie" resulting from specialization according to the comparative advantage of nations. It all seems simple, logical and quite reasonable when I demonstrate the concept on the board with numbers. However, I am also obliged to explain the caveat, which is that *free trade* produces both losers and winners. So while on the one hand, the economic pie is made greater by free trade, the latter must be followed by a redistribution of the pie in order to compensate the losers for their dire predicament which resulted directly from te implementation of said *free trade*. This is then depicted as a "win-win" for everybody because people are thereby able to partake in said enlarged pie. All good and well, right? Well, it so happens that things sometimes don't seem to turn out that way in the real world. President Bill Clinton explained the virtues of this free-trade induced *pie enlargement* when he sold NAFTA to the US public. The problem was that the losers were never compensated or compensated inadequately! We know that the Republicans do not believe in re-distributive policies, and Democrats seem as of late to lean more and more toward Republican policies, so there doesn't seem to be much prospect for re-distribution among the main political choices in America. Hence the losers were left to fester. The garment workers whose jobs "departed" for Mexico and China were not only never compensated, but the much heralded "retraining" of laid off workers from such "sunset" industries to enable adaption and subsequent employment in the "sunrise" industries which were to replace them was inadequate. ...And the politicians of both parties went their merry ways and forgot all about the "losers". The latter, to make a long story short, became bitter and elected Trump! So my point with this little ditty is that Trump is as much the fault of Liberals as it is the fault of those "Tea Partiers" who Hillary so disparagingly called "deplorables". Food for thought which I am uniquely capable of providing instruction on since it is my profession. Further reading on the subject is provided in the following PDF.

Originally published at LinkedIn.

Nobel Lecture by Harold Pinter

The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor Harold Pinter nearly twelve years ago. Although Pinter had been stricken with a serious infection at the time of the award (he died a few years later), he videotaped his Nobel Lecture, "Art, Truth and Politics", and projected it at the Swedish Academy on the evening of 7 December 2005. It should be viewed by everyone (particularly Americans) who has the opportunity to do so:



Wikipedia:

Pinter's career as a playwright began with a production of The Room in 1957. His second play, The Birthday Party, closed after eight performances, but was enthusiastically reviewed by critic Harold Hobson. His early works were described by critics as "comedy of menace". Later plays such as No Man's Land (1975) and Betrayal (1978) became known as "memory plays". He appeared as an actor in productions of his own work on radio and film. He also undertook a number of roles in works by other writers. He directed nearly 50 productions for stage, theatre and screen. Pinter received over 50 awards, prizes, and other honours, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005 and the French Légion d'honneur in 2007.

This is How Empires Fall

The headline (above) is obviously an oversimplification. Nevertheless, given the premium placed on knowledge in today's advanced economies, THIS is a telling piece, and it must be read from beginning to end.

I share this fear:

I fear we are moving beyond a natural skepticism regarding expert claims to the death of the ideal of expertise itself: a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laypeople, teachers and students, knowers and wonderers—in other words, between those with achievement in an area and those with none. By the death of expertise, I do not mean the death of actual expert abilities, the knowledge of specific things that sets some people apart from others in various areas. There will always be doctors and lawyers and engineers and other specialists. And most sane people go straight to them if they break a bone or get arrested or need to build a bridge. But that represents a kind of reliance on experts as technicians, the use of established knowledge as an off-the-shelf convenience as desired.
(...)
The larger discussions, from what constitutes a nutritious diet to what actions will best further U.S. interests, require conversations between ordinary citizens and experts. But increasingly, citizens don’t want to have those conversations. Rather, they want to weigh in and have their opinions treated with deep respect and their preferences honored not on the strength of their arguments or on the evidence they present but based on their feelings, emotions, and whatever stray information they may have picked up here or there along the way.

This is a very bad thing. A modern society cannot function without a social division of labor. No one is an expert on everything. We prosper because we specialize, developing formal and informal mechanisms and practices that allow us to trust one another in those specializations and gain the collective benefit of our individual expertise.

Qiyan Music & Abdel Karim Ensemble

I am choosing to start off the New Year with some sublime music.

From the 8th to the 13th centuries, female slaves trained in musical composition and performance, the recitation and composition of poetry, the art of embellishing their conversation with entertaining literary and historical anecdotes, the crafts of calligraphy and shadow-puppetry, as well as other art forms, were one of the most elegant and refined expressions of Islamic culture in Spain. These women (Ar. qiyān) were major contributors to, and conduits for, the transmission of the arts during the golden age of Islamic Spain (Ar. al-Andalus).

Also, not to be missed:



Abdel Karim Ensemble, (above):

Formed by professional musicians from several countries (Syria, Egypt, Morocco and Spain) and under the direction of Abdel Karim, this ensemble has the purpose of studying and popularizing Arabic classical music. Its repertory includes music from throughout the Middle East, from Turkey to Egypt, ranging from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Abdel Karim Ensemble also performs Andalusian Arabic music, a genre that originated in Al-Andalus, Islamic medieval Spain, where it was cultivated as a poetic-musical form known as Muwashaha.

Syria Update

Elijah J Magnier, from whose blog I am quoting, below, has a pretty good track record in reporting on the Middle East. In his personal blog, he describes himself as a "Senior Political Risk Analyst with over 32 years’ experience covering Europe & the Middle East. Acquiring in-depth experience, robust contacts and political knowledge in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Syria."

His analysis in this particular POST includes a very cogent synopsis of what a Clinton administration policy might look like regarding Syria. As we should all know by now, there was recently a serious but perhaps futile attempt by the US and Russia to eke out a "seven days cease-fire during which humanitarian convoys would be allowed into besieged areas (in Aleppo, I assume) by both the belligerents." If anything, it was an attempt by the two principle suppliers of war machinery to this conflict to seek an alternative to the continued obliteration of the country by the belligerent parties. While we can engage in endless discussion of whether or not this was indeed a fool's errand, at least it was an attempt to begin seeking a different solution to the problem. Who knows what could have developed afterwards if it had succeeded? As we all now know, the "plan" was stillborn. There are some important indicators as to whom may have ultimately been responsible for the failure of the plan, but that isn't the most important "message" of the piece.

Elijah J M's analysis of the situation in Syria as stands is both thoughtful and well-informed, and merits being read in its entirety (everyone will undoubtedly arrive at their own conclusion as to who ultimately caused the plan to fail, but the whole truth may likely never be known, lost as often is the case in these situations amidst the "fog of war"). Nevertheless, there is one party whose actions are unequivocal, and Elijah J M makes this patently clear:

But what happened and why did the agreement failed?(sic)...
Al-Qaeda, excluded from the ceasefire deal, has no interest in seeing it working. Its forces, along with US vetted group of Ahrar al-Sham and Beit al-Maqdes attacked the Syrian forces south of Syria, at al Hader, supported by the Israeli Air Force. Twenty-one artillery positions were destroyed by the Israel Air Force hours before the attack along the Golan border.

Elijah J M's most significant attempt at a "prediction", however, is encapsulated in the title of the piece: The mistrust between Washington and Moscow portends a long war. In particular, he states:

"Hillary Clinton, if she becomes president, understands that the Kremlin is determined to protect its interests in the Levant; and that the war in Syria concerns Russia directly because it demonstrates success or failure in the Middle East. The US will do its best to see Russia and Iran drown in Syria and will not accept that the US administration has failed to reach its goal."

Considering the photos/reports of the tragic situation in Syria which the western (and particularly the US) mainstream media have chosen to highlight for some time already (as opposed, say, to those depicting the equally dire situation in other places like Yemen) we can only say (if we accept Elijah J M's eminently plausible "prediction") that such reporting is once more a reflection of the utter hypocrisy of western governments that have no intention whatsoever of seeing an end to this tragic conflict. The reports and photos of casualties in the western press are mere props in a politically motivated propaganda campaign of one-upmanship. The Syrian people be damned as long as the west can bleed the Russians dry in an ongoing proxy war which nobody can know the ultimate duration of.

A Thinly Veiled Threat to the Freedom of Speech in the U.S.A.

While I have been following these disturbing developments over recent years, the renown American investigative journalist best known for his role in covering the Iran-Contra affair (among other important issues) Robert Parry, has summed them up in a timely and hard-hitting piece that even shocked me to my core. While doing an excellent job of summarising and providing links on the subject of the United States propaganda onslaught against Russia, which revolves primarily but not exclusively around happenings in Ukraine, it is his observations in the latter part of his ARTICLE which shook me and should trouble the American public in general. He quotes a piece in the Washington Post:

“U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions. … “The aim is to understand the scope and intent of the Russian campaign, which incorporates cyber-tools to hack systems used in the political process, enhancing Russia’s ability to spread disinformation. … A Russian influence operation in the United States ‘is something we’re looking very closely at,’ said one senior intelligence official,” while admitting that there is no “definitive proof” of such a Russian scheme.

Parry correctly points out:

The danger of this investigation – and what a normal news media would focus on – is the U.S. government taking an unfocused look at how Russia supposedly influences the U.S. public debate, a probe that could easily cross the line into questioning the loyalty of Americans who simply dispute what the U.S. government is claiming about current events.

The following sent chills down my spine because in my own interactions with people on the social media, I have already been accused of this on several occasions:

In other words, any reporting or commenting on significant foreign policy issues could open a journalist or a citizen to a U.S. government investigation into whether you are part of some nefarious Russian propaganda/disinformation scheme. This McCarthyistic investigative style has already begun to have a chilling effect on public debate in the United States where dissident views on Russia, Syria or other hot topics are quickly disparaged as enemy propaganda. Almost anyone who questions whether a new, costly and dangerous Cold War is necessary is immediately tagged as a “Russian agent of influence,” a “Putin apologist,” or a “Moscow stooge.”

I want to take this chance to reiterate what I have been and will continue arguing every chance I get over the social media about this supposed new "Cold War" developing between Washington and Moscow, owing largely to the instigation of the former, but I will do it via a quote from someone far more eloquent than I:

"Western diplomats, politicians, and media are highly selective about tyranny. Boris Yeltsin’s state was not much superior to Vladimir Putin’s. Yeltsin used tanks to shell his own parliament. He waged a barbaric war in Chechnya. He blatantly rigged his own re-election with the aid of foreign cash. He practically sold the entire country. Russians, accustomed to corruption as a way of life, gasped at its extent under Yeltsin’s rule. Yet he was counted a friend of the West, and went largely uncriticized. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who locks up many more journalists than does Mr. Putin, who kills his own people when they demonstrate against him, and who has described democracy as a tram which you ride as far as you can get on it before getting off, has for many years enjoyed the warm endorsement of the West. His country’s illegal occupation of northern Cyprus, which has many parallels to Russia’s occupation of Crimea, goes unpunished. Turkey remains a member of NATO, wooed by the E.U. As for Saudi Arabia and China, countries much fawned upon by the Western nations, the failure to criticize these for their internal despotism is so enormous that the mind simply refuses to take it in. But I need not go on. The current attitude toward the Putin state is selective and cynical, not based upon any real principle."

I can't really add much more perspective to that very congent observation. However, I want to end this post with the following, which was brought to my attention by a dear friend and former teacher. Please see it all the way through:

You have not lived...

Until you've witnessed this. I'm doing you a favor.



You're welcome!

The "Deep" State

This is the big story of our time. Whether you accept it or not is another question entirely.



...And for a current example of the "Deep" State pulling at strings to achieve its goal, you needn't go much further than THIS.

"The death of neoliberalism and the crisis in western politics", by Martin Jacques

Very interesting article, this is...

"Few recognise that we are at the end of an era. Old attitudes and assumptions still predominate..."

Indeed!
I wish I could be as sanguine as the author. I just don't know. Perhaps he's correct, in which case we can expect a return to Rooseveltian (New Deal) policies. Will that work? Conventional wisdom claims that it wasn't so much the New Deal as it was the Second World War that ultimately helped overcome the Great Depression. I doubt that war is an option nowadays, but maybe the ruling class wants to go down that road regardless. It would certainly explain the bellicose language being deployed against Russia and China.

Of Silk Roads and the U.S.A.

Pepe Escobar has been reporting for some time now on developments in the Far East, among other places. Keeping tabs on Mr. Escobar is a good way to keep tabs on everything "China", including several promising Silk Road initiatives. His latest article for my favorite blogger gives the following enticing summary:

Thanks to a set of cross-pollinating political institutions, investment funds, development banks, financial systems, and infrastructure projects that, to date, remain largely under Washington’s radar, a free-trade Eurasian heartland is being born. It will someday link China and Russia to Europe, Southwest Asia, and even Africa. It promises to be an astounding development. Keep your eyes, if you can, on the accumulating facts on the ground, even if they are rarely covered in the American media. They represent the New Great -- emphasis on that word -- Game in Eurasia.

However I don't think these initiatives, as he asserts, lie largely under Washington’s radar. Washington is well aware of them and though it may currently not know if it should thwart or join them, I believe the latter choice will wisely prevail in the long run. To cite a recent Brookings paper:

Many major economies in Asia, such as Australia, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam want to be part of both Chinese initiatives (the AIIB and the “One Belt, One Road”) and the American-led effort to reduce trade barriers.
(...)
There is a risk that the competing initiatives of China and the United States will lead to regional blocs and a disintegration of trade, but it is more likely that Sino-American competition will lead to strengthened institutions and deeper integration throughout Asia-Pacific.

Read both articles in their entirety.

Rhiannon Giddens

Rhiannon Giddens: A kindred spirit in more ways than one:

When her white father and black mother wed, "it was a huge deal, even for Greensboro," Giddens notes grimly. "They had to go to another town to get a license."

Rhiannon Giddens is an American musician. She is known as the lead singer, violinist, banjo player and a founding member of the Grammy-winning[1] country, blues and old-time music Carolina Chocolate Drops. She is a native of Greensboro, North Carolina and a 2000 graduate of Oberlin Conservatory where she studied opera.

More Rhiannon HERE.

We’re Not Going Back!

A 2015 Celebration of African American Culture and Struggle, by the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Hon. Ras Baraka.

Letting the Neoconservative Cretins Lead

The wisdom of Robert Parry:

But just pause for a minute and contemplate what would have happened if President Obama had followed neocon advice last year and launched massive air strikes to take out Syria’s military over dubious allegations that it was responsible for a Sarin gas attack. Though Official Washington’s “group think” is that somehow, magically, the virtually non-existent “moderate” Syrian opposition would have taken over and everything would have worked out just wonderfully, the much more likely result would have been that radical Islamists, either the Islamic State or Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, would have seized power. The black jihadist flag might very well have been flying over Damascus.

P.S. - The links are mine.

Of course, there are many wise individuals we seldom hear from:

It is time for the US to recognize that since it launched its war on terror, the scourge has only spread. The Afghanistan-Pakistan belt has remained “ground zero” for transnational terrorism, and once-stable countries like Libya, Iraq, and Syria have emerged as new hubs.

And finally, there is one chart that I urge any and every-one to view.

BLUE (The legendary piano of Yarmouk)

My usual joy in the piano gave way to melancholy as I watched a dystopian reality unfold in the video: five young men stand shoulder to shoulder facing the piano; they sing along despite the bitter cold that shivered in their malnourished bodies. They tuck their hands in their pockets and sing along with the angry piano notes: “O displaced come back, the traveling has been far too long.”

The legendary piano of Yarmouk

The Thrasybulus Syndrome.

“Violent remedies, though they make one safe from one aspect, yet from another . . . involve all kinds of weaknesses. ... Francesco Guicciardini

The relentless destruction of Gaza and its inhabitants continues, as well as the concomitant back-and-forth propaganda wars in the western media. Perhaps Americans should take the time to consider this excellent article by Professor David C. Hendrickson of Colorado College, titled The Thrasybulus Syndrome: Israel’s War on Gaza. Why Americans? Well, I'll let the good professor explain it to you in his own words:

No prudent foreign policy should ignore the motive for retaliation we give by recklessly using force in the Islamic world ourselves or by identifying the United States so closely with Israel. Adverting to this phenomenon two centuries ago, then-diplomat John Quincy Adams wrote that to take an eye for an eye allowed the allied powers ranged against France to “glut their vengeance for the wrongs” they had received from France, but Adams believed that they were “laying up stores of wrath for the day of wrath in revenge for those which they are inflicting.”

Boycott Israel!

A sample of United Nations Resolutions violated by Israel over the years:

# * Resolution 106: " . . . 'condemns' Israel for Gaza raid".
# * Resolution 111: " . . . 'condemns' Israel for raid on Syria that killed fifty-six people".
# * Resolution 127: " . . . 'recommends' Israel suspends it's 'no-man's zone' in Jerusalem".
# * Resolution 162: " . . . 'urges' Israel to comply with UN decisions".
# * Resolution 171: " . . . determines flagrant violations' by Israel in its attack on Syria".
# * Resolution 228: " . . . 'censures' Israel for its attack on Samu in the West Bank, then under Jordanian control".
# * Resolution 237: " . . . 'urges' Israel to allow return of new 1967 Palestinian refugees".
# * Resolution 248: " . . . 'condemns' Israel for its massive attack on Karameh in Jordan".
# * Resolution 250: " . . . 'calls' on Israel to refrain from holding military parade in Jerusalem".
# * Resolution 251: " . . . 'deeply deplores' Israeli military parade in Jerusalem in defiance of Resolution 250".
# * Resolution 252: " . . . 'declares invalid' Israel's acts to unify Jerusalem as Jewish capital".
# * Resolution 256: " . . . 'condemns' Israeli raids on Jordan as 'flagrant violation.
# * Resolution 259: " . . . 'deplores' Israel's refusal to accept UN mission to probe occupation".
# * Resolution 262: " . . . 'condemns' Israel for attack on Beirut airport".
# * Resolution 265: " . . . 'condemns' Israel for air attacks for Salt in Jordan".
# * Resolution 267: " . . . 'censures' Israel for administrative acts to change the status of Jerusalem".
# *Resolution 270: " . . . 'condemns' Israel for air attacks on villages in southern Lebanon".
# * Resolution 271: " . . . 'condemns' Israel's failure to obey UN resolutions on Jerusalem".
# * Resolution 279: " . . . 'demands' withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon".
# * Resolution 280: " . . . 'condemns' Israeli's attacks against Lebanon".
# * Resolution 285: " . . . 'demands' immediate Israeli withdrawal form Lebanon".
# * Resolution 298: " . . . 'deplores' Israel's changing of the status of Jerusalem.
# * Resolution 313: " . . . 'demands' that Israel stop attacks against Lebanon.
# * Resolution 316: " . . . 'condemns' Israel for repeated attacks on Lebanon.
# * Resolution 317: " . . . 'deplores' Israel's refusal to release Arabs abducted in Lebanon".
# * Resolution 332: " . . . 'condemns' Israel's repeated attacks against Lebanon".
# * Resolution 337: " . . . 'condemns' Israel for violating Lebanon's sovereignty".
# * Resolution 347: " . . . 'condemns' Israeli attacks on Lebanon".
# * Resolution 425: " . . . 'calls' on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon".
# * Resolution 427: " . . . 'calls' on Israel to complete its withdrawal from Lebanon.
# * Resolution 444: " . . . 'deplores' Israel's lack of cooperation with UN peacekeeping forces".
# * Resolution 446: " . . . 'determines' that Israeli settlements are a 'serious obstruction' to peace and calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
# * Resolution 450: " . . . 'calls' on Israel to stop attacking Lebanon".
# * Resolution 452: " . . . 'calls' on Israel to cease building settlements in occupied territories".
# * Resolution 465: " . . . 'deplores' Israel's settlements and asks all member states not to assist Israel's settlements program".
# * Resolution 467: " . . . 'strongly deplores' Israel's military intervention in Lebanon".
# * Resolution 468: " . . . 'calls' on Israel to rescind illegal expulsions of two Palestinian mayors and a judge and to facilitate their return".
# * Resolution 469: " . . . 'strongly deplores' Israel's failure to observe the council's order not to deport Palestinians".
# * Resolution 471: " . . . 'expresses deep concern' at Israel's failure to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention".
# * Resolution 476: " . . . 'reiterates' that Israel's claim to Jerusalem are 'null and void'".
# * Resolution 478: " . . . 'censures (Israel) in the strongest terms' for its claim to Jerusalem in its 'Basic Law'".
# * Resolution 484: " . . . 'declares it imperative' that Israel re-admit two deported Palestinian mayors".
# * Resolution 487: " . . . 'strongly condemns' Israel for its attack on Iraq's nuclear facility".
# * Resolution 497: " . . . 'decides' that Israel's annexation of Syria's Golan Heights is 'null and void' and demands that Israel rescinds its decision forthwith".
# * Resolution 498: " . . . 'calls' on Israel to withdraw from Lebanon".
# * Resolution 501: " . . . 'calls' on Israel to stop attacks against Lebanon and withdraw its troops".
# * Resolution 509: " . . . 'demands' that Israel withdraw its forces forthwith and unconditionally from Lebanon".
# * Resolution 515: " . . . 'demands' that Israel lift its siege of Beirut and allow food supplies to be brought in".
# * Resolution 517: " . . . 'censures' Israel for failing to obey UN resolutions and demands that Israel withdraw its forces from Lebanon".
# * Resolution 518: " . . . 'demands' that Israel cooperate fully with UN forces in Lebanon".
# * Resolution 520: " . . . 'condemns' Israel's attack into West Beirut".
# * Resolution 573: " . . . 'condemns' Israel 'vigorously' for bombing Tunisia in attack on PLO headquarters.
# * Resolution 587: " . . . 'takes note' of previous calls on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon and urges all parties to withdraw".
# * Resolution 592: " . . . 'strongly deplores' the killing of Palestinian students at Bir Zeit University by Israeli troops".
# * Resolution 605: " . . . 'strongly deplores' Israel's policies and practices denying the human rights of Palestinians.
# * Resolution 607: " . . . 'calls' on Israel not to deport Palestinians and strongly requests it to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
# * Resolution 608: " . . . 'deeply regrets' that Israel has defied the United Nations and deported Palestinian civilians".
# * Resolution 636: " . . . 'deeply regrets' Israeli deportation of Palestinian civilians.
# * Resolution 641: " . . . 'deplores' Israel's continuing deportation of Palestinians.
# * Resolution 672: " . . . 'condemns' Israel for violence against Palestinians at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount.
# * Resolution 673: " . . . 'deplores' Israel's refusal to cooperate with the United Nations.
# * Resolution 681: " . . . 'deplores' Israel's resumption of the deportation of Palestinians.
# * Resolution 694: " . . . 'deplores' Israel's deportation of Palestinians and calls on it to ensure their safe and immediate return.
# * Resolution 726: " . . . 'strongly condemns' Israel's deportation of Palestinians.
# * Resolution 799: ". . . 'strongly condemns' Israel's deportation of 413 Palestinians and calls for there immediate return.

Ahad Ha'am's prescience

Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg (18 August 1856 – 2 January 1927), primarily known by his Hebrew name and pen name, Ahad Ha'am (Hebrew: אחד העם, lit. one of the people, Genesis 26:10), was a Hebrew essayist, and one of the foremost pre-state Zionist thinkers. He is known as the founder of cultural Zionism. Disturbed by what he saw in 1891, Ahad Ha'am wrote (among other things) about Jewish relationships to the native Arabs:

"We must surely learn, from both our past and present history, how careful we must be not to provoke the anger of the native people by doing them wrong, how we should be cautious in our dealings with a foreign people among whom we returned to live, to handle these people with love and respect and, needless to say, with justice and good judgment. And what do our brothers do? Exactly the opposite! They were slaves in their Diasporas, and suddenly they find themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only a country like Turkey [the Ottoman Empire] can offer. This sudden change has planted despotic tendencies in their hearts, as always happens to former slaves ['eved ki yimlokh – when a slave becomes king – Proverbs 30:22]. They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put an end to this despicable and dangerous tendency."

Over a century later, this stands out as a sad sad commentary on humanity (our lackof it).

NELSON MANDELA 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013

Bigger than Life:

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (Xhosa pronunciation: [xoˈliːɬaɬa manˈdeːla]) (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary who was imprisoned and then became a politician and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the first black South African to hold the office, and the first elected in a fully representative election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation. Politically an African nationalist and democratic socialist, he served as the President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1991 to 1997. Internationally, Mandela was the Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999.

Nelson Mandela Digital Archive Project

Thirty Years Ago Today...

The United States invaded Grenada.

In memory of Maurice Bishop:

Trying to laugh in order to keep from crying...

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The idiots at the US NSA

Need I say more than Bernard Chazelle at Lobelog?:

The NSA has hopped on the Big-Data bandwagon or, as it were, the All-Data supertrain. Any terrorist aware of the hazards of Big Data knows that spurious correlations increase faster than data size and so will pray that the NSA keeps a diary of all life forms on the planet. If you’re a needle hiding in a haystack, all you want is more hay, like, say, a yottabyte worth of it. Bad guys will love Big Data. Social activists not so much.

The piece is brilliant. I suggest you read it all.

And I concur 100% with A.A. on this:

Imagine if a Russian or a Chinese man/woman were to do the same as Snowden? He/she would have been uniformly hailed and lauded and he/she would have received tons of Western awards and honors. Utter hypocrisy. They want courage and defiance but only outside of their borders...

10th Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq

On the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I find little solace in having been right at the time in opposing the war. There is every indication that we (the USA) haven't learned anything from the debacle. Since I have expressed my views on this in various forms in the past, HERE, HERE and HERE, I have nothing more to add.

Instead, I will link to a crucial piece by a prominent military blogger that gets to the root of the problem: Drinking the Kool-Aid. Do yourself a favor and read it.

A Veteran's Day Meditation

I again cede the stage to others far more eloquent than I. From Boston Globe columnist James Carroll:

There is disgrace in what the United States has done in southwest Asia since 2001. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans remain the so far uncalculated measure of what America inflicted. Having so misused the patriotism of its own military members fighting abroad, are we now misusing their proper status as honored veterans at home to avoid reckoning with a national dishonor? When politicians celebrate the individual virtues of veterans by praising the American military as the best fighting force in the world, are they deflecting the harsh truth that both in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon behemoth has been fought to a draw by primitive forces? If the most bloated military budget on the planet can be matched by impoverished tribal warlords, why is that budget sacrosanct? Its defenders use the honoring of veterans to shore up the very militarism to which the veterans themselves have been sacrificed.

US election aftermath with Jon Stewart

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Jimmy Carter took the words right out of my mouth!

I simply cannot comprehend a certain conservative-thinking acquaintance who once told me that former President Jimmy Carter is ashamed to be an American. I responded that contrary to him, I believe Carter embodies what is outstanding about the United States. This opinion piece is a perfect example of what I'm talking about:

At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends. As concerned citizens, we must persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership according to international human rights norms that we had officially adopted as our own and cherished throughout the years.

Please go read the whole thing!

IRAN: We study History for a reason; or at least we used to

Given the relentless push toward war with Iran, it is time again to bring out the history books. The weapons for combating ignorance are there for those who care to deploy them: A timely book by Christopher de Bellaigue is reviewed in this issue of The London Review of Books. Entitled Why Weren't They Grateful, the review reminds us of the destructiveness of colonialism:

Both liberal and radical Iranians could cite instances of the country’s humiliation by the West in the 19th century, when it had been dominated by the British and the Russians. The events of the early 20th century further undermined its political autonomy at a time when its political institutions were being liberalised (a parliament had been established as a result of the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-7). In the First World War, Britain and Russia first occupied and then divided the country in order to keep the Ottoman-German armies at bay. The end of the war brought no respite. The Red Army threatened from the north and Britain, already parcelling out the Ottoman Empire’s territories, saw an opportunity to annex Iran. Lord Curzon, now foreign secretary and convinced, as Harold Nicolson put it, that ‘God had personally selected the British upper class as an instrument of the Divine Will,’ drew up an Anglo-Persian agreement which was almost entirely destructive of Iranian sovereignty.

The story of Mossadegh is told up to his vilification by the British and, not to be outdone, the USA:

Having proclaimed the ‘American Century’, Henry Luce’s Time took a particular interest in commodity-rich Iran, arguing that the ‘Russians may intervene, grab the oil, even unleash World War Three’. Already determined to overthrow Mossadegh, the British did not take long to exploit the growing American obsession with Soviet expansionism: Iran was to provide a test run on how to taint Asian nationalism by associating it with communism. They found a receptive audience in the Dulles brothers, the secretary of state and the head of the CIA in Eisenhower’s new administration in 1953.

The rest is history: the overthrow of Mossadegh, the installation of the Shah, all with the help of the CIA. If you don't know it, then at least read the book! Maybe then you'll understand why:

Support for Iran’s right to pursue its nuclear programme cuts across the country’s political divisions. Aspiring regime-changers in the West remain blind to the undiminished potency of Iranian nationalism. More bizarrely and dangerously, they ignore the hardening attitudes of the country’s ruling class after a century of humiliation by the West. ‘We are not liberals like Allende and Mossadegh, whom the CIA can snuff out,’ Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now Iran’s supreme leader, warned during the hostage crisis in 1979.

Memorial Day 2012

In lieu of any meditation of my own, I pass the baton on to others more eloquent than I:

Almost every war in every era could have been avoided, if the majority of men were not motivated by the basest, most repellent and petty of factors: the lust for power, greed, and the pathetic search for "meaning" and "glory" in one's life by killing the designated "other" of a brief historical moment.

Iran: Historical Backdrop to the Present Crisis

Vastly eloquent. Hat tip to Juan Cole.


How U.S.-Iranian Standoff Looks From Iran: Hossein Mousavian:

Both the U.S. and Iran have become prisoners of the past. They need to have a realistic assessment of potential areas where they could have common interests, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, security in the Persian Gulf, curbing drug trafficking, opposing al-Qaeda, and limiting the role of the Taliban. Unfortunately, the pursuit of these potential common interests has so far been hampered by a preoccupation with the nuclear file and the domestic political climate in both countries.

Interracial Marriage was Illegal Not Too Long Ago

According to US law (at the time) I should have never been born.

The nation has certainly come a long way since then (and I am glad to have lived long enough to witness it). It rekindles my faith in the Human Race.

(WASHINGTON) — Interracial marriages in the U.S. have climbed to 4.8 million — a record 1 in 12 — as a steady flow of new Asian and Hispanic immigrants expands the pool of prospective spouses. Blacks are now substantially more likely than before to marry whites.

America's legacy of destruction in Iraq

As a lifelong academic, I am greatly saddened by this. It adds immensely to the shame Americans need to feel for the blunder that was the illegal invasion of Iraq:

An Education in Occupation, by Hugh Gusterson:

Until the 1990s, Iraq had perhaps the best university system in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein's regime used oil revenues to underwrite free tuition for Iraqi university students -- churning out doctors, scientists, and engineers who joined the country's burgeoning middle class and anchored development. Although political dissent was strictly off-limits, Iraqi universities were professional, secular institutions that were open to the West, and spaces where male and female, Sunni and Shia mingled. Also the schools pushed hard to educate women PDF, who constituted 30 percent of Iraqi university faculties by 1991.
(...)
According to The Washington Times, 280 Iraqi professors were killed and another 3,250 fled the country by the end of 2006.
(...)
Those faculty fortunate enough to move abroad became part of the great middle-class exodus from Iraq under US occupation. It is estimated that 10 percent of Iraq's population, and 30 percent of its professors, doctors, and engineers, left for neighboring countries between 2003 and 2007 -- the largest Arab refugee displacement since the Palestinian flight from the holy lands decades earlier.

Add this to America's legacy of destruction in the Middle East.

An Important Day in my Life

Actually, the day I am marking as "important" is yesterday, and for two reasons: The first reason is that I managed to upload Uncle Neal's trio concert onto YouTube (actually a friend helped me do it, but he misspelled Uncle Neal's name). The second reason remains unmentioned...

The US Corporate State

On this Three Kings Day, a time when we step back, take stock of things and try to gain insights into the future, I'm afraid Chris Hedges summarizes the status quo succinctly, as well as points to where the US is headed.

Celebrating My Birthday

I can't think of a better way to commemorate my birthday.

"Nothing has been more moving to me than this desire, realized imperfectly but repeatedly, to connect across differences, to be a community, to make a better world, to embrace each other. This desire is what lies behind those messy camps, those raucous demonstrations, those cardboard signs and long conversations. Young activists have spoken to me about the extraordinary richness of their experiences at Occupy, and they call it love." Rebecca Solnit

Miss Angola Leila Lopes crowned Miss Universe

Congratulations to Leila Lopes! There is more to her story, however, which you will likely not find in the pages of the western press. It needs to be told: The source is in SPANISH, and I have translated it:

Of parents from Cienfuegos, Cuba, and born in Angola, the new Miss Universe, Leila Lopes, has been the victim of vicious racist verbal attacks.

The messages, written in Portuguese and English, were reported by the Stormfront webpage, whose authors define themselves as a "white nationalist community", that is under investigation by the Brazilian Federal Police on suspicion of links with neo-Nazi groups.

Even before learning of the abuse, Leila Lopes had said in a press conference at dawn on Tuesday, to not feel affected by racism.

"Racism does not affect me. The racists are the ones that need help, because it is not normal for a person to [harbor such ideas]... in the XXI century. There is no basis for any kind of prejudice," said the beautiful young 25 year old.

The organizers of the competition held Monday evening in Sao Paulo gave no immediate comment on the racist attacks by members of Stormfront, who also questioned the "racial purity" of European candidates for the title.

Beautifully said, Leila. Short, sweet and to the point! Bravo!

The Legacy of 9-11 on its Tenth Anniversary

I agree wholeheartedly with Tom Engelhardt:

Let's just can it...
Ask yourself this: ten years into the post-9/11 era, haven't we had enough of ourselves? If we have any respect for history or humanity or decency left, isn’t it time to rip the Band-Aid off the wound, to remove 9/11 from our collective consciousness? No more invocations of those attacks to explain otherwise inexplicable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our oh-so-global war on terror. No more invocations of 9/11 to keep the Pentagon and the national security state flooded with money. No more invocations of 9/11 to justify every encroachment on liberty, every new step in the surveillance of Americans, every advance in pat-downs and wand-downs and strip downs that keeps fear high and the homeland security state afloat.

I have expressed myself already on the handling of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9-11, so there is no need to revisit that. If we must remember something on this day, it should be the following:

It's hardly controversial to suggest that the mainstream media's performance in the lead-up to the Iraq War was a disaster. In retrospect, many journalists and pundits wish they had been more skeptical of the White House's claims about Iraq, particularly its allegations about weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, though, media apologists suggest that the press could not have done much better, since "everyone" was in agreement on the intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons threat. This was never the case. Critical journalists and analysts raised serious questions at the time about what the White House was saying. Often, however, their warnings were ignored by the bulk of the corporate press.

This timeline is an attempt to recall some of the worst moments in journalism, from the fall of 2002 and into the early weeks of the Iraq War. It is not an exhaustive catalog, but a useful reference point for understanding the media's performance. The timeline also points to missed opportunities, when courageous journalists—working inside the mainstream and the alternative media—uncovered stories that should have made the front pages of daily newspapers, or provided fodder for TV talk shows. By reading mainstream media critically and tuning into the alternative press, citizens can see that the notion that "everyone" was wrong about Iraq was—and is—just another deception.

Hypocrisy

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Earl Neal Creque

The final months of the year 2000 were devastating for the West Indian side my family. In October, I lost my mother while in December I lost the last two of my uncles on my mother's side of the family: Marvin and Neal. Uncle Neal passed away around December 1 and it is him I want to remember with this post.

My uncle was born Earl Neal Creque on April 13, 1940, in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, the last of eight children born to my grandfather (Cyril Creque) and grandmother (Leonie Sewer). He began taking piano lessons at age five and from around nine to sixteen years of age he studied classical piano with Edris Stakemann. Since a biographical sketch of Neal can be accessed on-line, I will not reproduce what is already available. I just want to add that my Uncle Neal was a prolific composer, having reportedly composed over 3,000 compositions (not all of them Jazz), and a teacher, having been on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Cleveland State University. Although he didn't leave an extensive legacy of commercial recordings, his compositions have been widely appreciated (and recorded) by top-caliber musicians that knew him, from Mongo Santamaria to Ramsey Lewis, among many others.

What I want to do is commit to writing some scattered memories of my own and combine them with an interview my Uncle Neal granted to the Cleveland Plain Dealer late in his career. First, a bit of personal background is in order. I have a vivid recollection of my Uncle Marvin and Aunt Marilyn's household (whose entire family I grew up with, you could say, since I visited them with regularity from my early childhood days). The house was filled with music (both live and recorded Jazz Music*), given that instruments were always available, which fellow musician friends of my uncle would stop by to play at any hour of the day or night. My Uncle Marvin had learned piano and could belt out a tune from memory although he never pursued a career in music. In fact, the Marvin Creque household had garnered a reputation throughout Charlotte Amalie as a sort of impromptu Jazz studio. Those were joyous days for me and, while I did not recognize it at the moment, they would have a profound impact on me later in life. Hence from my early days, I came to "absorb" Jazz (by osmosis, if you will) and associate it with my Uncle Marvin, though I was only able to fully appreciate the genre later in life.

Although all my mother's siblings were musically trained at some points in their lives, the only one (other than herself) to have made a career out of music was my Uncle Neal. While I had met Uncle Neal during my childhood, it wasn't until I went to Oberlin College (from 1977 to 1981) that I got to know and appreciate his talent as a Jazz musician. It was also during that period that I was finally able to fully appreciate the genre of Jazz, to the extent that I consider it my first love above all other musical genres. Uncle Neal, at the time, was firmly established in nearby Cleveland and I (of course) took advantage of the proximity to visit him on occasion.

It was at my insistence (I believe), that Uncle Neal came to Oberlin for the first time. During my student days, there was a cultural activity of sorts being organized by the Black Students Association on campus for which students were asked to suggest artists. I jumped at the idea of having Uncle Neal play since by then I had come to love his music and, with him being in the vicinity, it wouldn't cost much to bring him. He brought a trio and wowed the students, but it wasn't until after I graduated that I learned that he had returned to Oberlin and eventually gotten a faculty appointment at the Jazz studies Department of the famed Oberlin Conservatory. I was so proud for him and for many years thought I had somehow managed to facilitate that job opportunity by inviting him to Oberlin during my student years. Ironically, I had bragged for many a year that my crowning achievement in Oberlin wasn't the fact that I obtained my bachelor's degree, but that I had unsuspectingly hooked Uncle Neal up with the prestigious conservatory of music!). I learned, shortly before his death that it was actually the Director Wendell Logan of the Oberlin Jazz Studies Department that had witnessed Neal (on another occasion) and beckoned him to (eventually) come to Oberlin.

Regardless of how he arrived at Oberlin, we were all so happy for him because it got him off the Jazz clubbing circuit. It is truly heartbreaking to witness the tragic history of many of Jazz's finest musicians and composers, who unable to make much money, are forced to constantly be on the road seeking gigs at (often seedy) night clubs, a lifestyle that leads to early burn-out in their careers and often to an early death. While most musicians don't have it good, the Jazz musician's lot in particular is terrible (although it has changed for the better in recent years). Hence, the steady job afforded Uncle Neal the opportunity to give loose reign to his creative powers without the economic knife at his throat. He also relished the opportunity to teach and was able to go back to one of his great loves - classical composition.

Uncle Neal expressed his outlook in an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer - He devotes more and more time to teaching at Oberlin College and Cleveland State University and writing classical music. What he tries to convey in his music, Creque says, "is the hope that the kids coming up in music respect the educational system that is afforded them today. A lot of things that are available to them, if they had been present years ago, no telling how far Jazz might have advanced. You can be studying at Oberlin and the talent can come in from all over the country to perform," he says. (…) As for the clubs, Creque doesn't miss them. "I think my interests have grown in a different direction", he says. "My original love was classical music and I'm back to that. Between performing and composing classical works and teaching, you get a chance to see an extension of yourself in terms of the student. When you see what you have accomplished, and pass some of that on, it's a marvelous thing."

Footnote and a requiem: My Uncle Marvin, more than any of us, loved Uncle Neal, perhaps because he saw in him the realization of what he had always wanted to do. We used to anguish over Uncle Neal's aversion to the recording studio. Despite being a prolific composer, Uncle Neal only left a handful of commercial recordings and most of these were made early in his career (which is one reason he is not well known on the Jazz circuit).

Neal did keep us readily supplied, however, with tape recordings of his concerts as well as some studio quality recordings. This would sometimes frustrate us even more because we (especially Uncle Marvin) would listen to these fantastic recordings and lament that they were not available on the commercial market (thus garnering him wider recognition). In an effort at garnering him wider recognition, I once even contacted the host Marian MacPartland of the popular radio program Piano Jazz to try to get him on the show, only to be told (after I mailed up a selection of his recordings) that a prerequisite for being invited to the show was that the artist have made a recent commercial recording. Shortly thereafter, we all learned that Uncle Neal had contracted cancer and I was (we all were) devastated.

I make no joke when I say that Uncle Neal is my favorite musician. I would say so even if he were no relative of mine. The fact that he was related to me was a source of immense pride and joy beyond description. I cherish the tapes and videos he diligently sent us over the years and preserve the copies of the classical pieces he composed late in his career, copies of which he had sent my mother. As a tribute, view the YouTube of Uncle Neal and Howie Smith playing Neal's composition "Slightly Monkish". I have a particular love for this piece because, aside from being a tribute to the all-time great Jazz icon (and favorite of mine!) Thelonious Monk, it has the calypso rhythm of our West Indian heritage in the Virgin Islands. God Bless You Uncle Neal.

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Here Comes your Non-Violent Resistance

A defining moment for all parties involved:

"FOR many years now, we've heard American commentators bemoan the violence of the Palestinian national movement. If only Palestinians had learned the lessons of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, we hear, they'd have had their state long ago. Surely no Israeli government would have violently suppressed a non-violent Palestinian movement of national liberation seeking only the universally recognised right of self-determination...So now we have an opportunity to see how Americans will react. We've asked the Palestinians to lay down their arms. We've told them their lack of a state is their own fault; if only they would embrace non-violence, a reasonable and unprejudiced world would see the merit of their claims. Over the weekend, tens of thousands of them did just that, and it seems likely to continue. If crowds of tens of thousands of non-violent Palestinian protesters continue to march, and if Israel continues to shoot at them, what will we do? Will we make good on our rhetoric, and press Israel to give them their state? Or will it turn out that our paeans to non-violence were just cynical tactics in an amoral international power contest staged by militaristic Israeli and American right-wing groups whose elective affinities lead them to shape a common narrative of the alien Arab/Muslim threat? Will we even bother to acknowledge that the Palestinians are protesting non-violently? Or will we soldier on with the same empty decades-old rhetoric, now drained of any truth or meaning, because it protects established relationships of power? What will it take to make Americans recognise that the real Martin Luther King-style non-violent Palestinian protesters have arrived, and that Israeli soldiers are shooting them with real bullets?"

Fukushima Nuclear Disaster- You won't hear this on the Main Stream News.

Obama Is Helping Iran

Most people I know are having difficulties figuring out what is happening in the Middle East and why. This is understandable, given the Western (and especially US) mainstream media's tendency to hand out the propaganda that Washington wants deployed precisely for domestic consumption. Hence, I feel compelled to highlight the following article by authors Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett. Flynt Leverett, who is about my age, is no light-weight. He:

...is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. and a professor at the Pennsylvania State University School of International Affairs. From March 2002 to March 2003, he served as the senior director for Middle East affairs on the National Security Council. Prior to serving on the NSC, he was a counterterrorism expert on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and before that he served as a CIA senior analyst for eight years. Since leaving government service, Leverett served as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy before becoming the director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative in the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation.

So, if you would like some insight about the Middle East and what is happening and likely to continue happening there, then do yourself a favor and read his article in Foreign Policy. Here are some excerpts:

On Obama's watch, the regional balance of influence and power has shifted even further away from the United States and toward Iran and its allies. The Islamic Republic has continued to deepen its alliances with Syria and Turkey and expand its influence in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. Public opinion polls, for example, continue to show that the key leaders in the Middle East's resistance bloc -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Assad, Lebanon's Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas's Khaled Mishaal, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- are all vastly more popular across the region than their counterparts in closely U.S.-aligned and supported regimes in Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and Saudi Arabia.
(...)
From literally the day after Iran's 2009 presidential election, we pointed out that the Green Movement could not succeed in bringing down the Islamic Republic, for two basic reasons: The movement did not represent anything close to a majority of Iranian society, and a majority of Iranians still support the idea of an Islamic Republic. Two additional factors are in play today, which make it even less likely that those who organized and participated in scattered demonstrations in Iran over the past week will be able to catalyze "regime change" there.
(...)

Go to the original article at Foreign Policy to discover what those "two additional factors" are. For further antidotes to the US mainstream media, I recommend Juan Cole and The Arabist.

An Open Letter from Gaza: Two Years after the Massacre, a Demand for Justice

An Open Letter from Gaza: Two Years after the Massacre, a Demand for Justice

The assault lasted 22 days, killing 1,417 Palestinians, 352 of them children, according to main-stream Human Rights Organizations. For a staggering 528 hours, Israeli Occupation Forces let loose their US-supplied F15s, F16s, Merkava Tanks, internationally prohibited White Phosphorous, and bombed and invaded the small Palestinian coastal enclave that is home to 1.5 million, of whom 800,000 are children and over 80 percent UN registered refugees. Around 5,300 remain permanently wounded.
(...)
We ask: when will the world’s countries act according to the basic premise that people should be treated equally, regardless of their origin, ethnicity or colour – is it so far-fetched that a Palestinian child deserves the same human rights as any other human being? Will you be able to look back and say you stood on the right side of history or will you have sided with the oppressor?

There is a War going on

"Happy" Thanksgiving

Haiti's Academic Community digs out of the Rubble

We share our grief with the rest of the world for the tragic circumstances that have befallen our fellow human beings in Haiti.  As members of the academic community, though, we hold a particular interest in the fate of those that labor in country's institutes for higher learning. In this respect, I would like to share with you an email from Dr. Jacky Lumarque,  Rector at Université Quisqueya.

Rough translation of mail ( by Gilles Lubeth) from Dr Jacky Lumarque,  Rector Université  Quisqueya:

It's my first time on the Internet since Tuesday's earthquake. My apologies to friends who may have been worried by my silence but I have been focused on rescue operations and assistance to families. Iwas bent on not ending rescue operations until getting confirmation that the persons we were searching for had indeed died.

Here's the situation...

I stopped searching for survivors for good and I am finally able to extract those corpses that have been identified: 5 students from the Faculty of Education, including 2 priests from the Salesiens congregation, a monk and a nun from the St Croix congregation, a lecturer, an engineer and two gardeners. We will find out this morning if there are more victims that can be identified.

The corpses are badly decomposed and we had to turn a water tank into a grave, in the botanical garden. This location will become a mausoleum dedicated to the victims of the earthquake. Bishop Dumas, members of the Don Bosco and St Croix congregations will hold a church service in memory of the victims at noon. Those who cannot be present physically will surely keep us in their affectionate thoughts.

Special thanks to students and volunteers (most of whom didn't even finish primary school) for the extroadinary courage displayed, as they work 48 hours non-stop to take about 20 survivors from the rubble, without any technical support and at risk of losing their own lives. Those who died before our eyes did not make it because of the lack of resources and equipment to move them out from under the beams and flagstones where they were crushed.

All the buildings were destroyed, including the Museum which was hosting an exhibition dedicated to the famous Haitian-born painter, Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as three apartments for visiting lecturers at Quisqueya and the state universities. We will have to start from scratch but I have no doubt about our collective ability to find the means, the energy and the determination to do so.  

For now, mobilization at Quisqueya has been directed to families in need. The Harry Truman Boulevard Campus has been used as a Center already hosting 10,000 victims from Cité  l'éternel. The Gheskio Center and US doctors are assisting those who are ill or injured. We invite ALL Quisqueya Medical Faculty students to come and assist us in organizing daily life in the community and providing basic care. We will wait for the venue to be secured (fences have to be put up again) before starting distributing food, in order to avoid looting.

On the Turgeau campus, the esplanade and the parking lot will also be transformed in a care center for the victims. Since we will be located near the main drinking water reservoir in the city, we are trying to set up a small water treatment plant in order to produce 3 thousand gallons of drinking water per day, to serve residents and newly installed "colonies" in peripheral neighbourhoods (Turgeau and Debussy). Aide et Action is expected to get the equipment needed for the plant from the Dominican Republic. Quisqueya students are invited to form a solidarity network. Helping the more fragile among us will actually give them the strength and inspiration to rebuild their individual lives and the community.

International aid has been abundant but poorly coordinated and there are great frustrations. The population has spontaneously formed "colonies" in various areas; these groups must be helped to get organized rationally while relief efforts are channeled to those who are most in need.

Thank you to all our friends for expressing their solidarity and affection. The hardest time is still to come, when we have to rebuild and spontaneous solidarity fades away. It is up to Haitians to get organized with the help of a network of friends acting out of solidarity rather than out of the search for media visibility only.

For additional information in English and from a Caribbean regional perspective, please check Dr. Norman Girvan's SITE.

This diary is cross-posted at Daily Kos and European Tribune.